Today we rejoice, as we
ordain Lindy Sanford, as priest, and Anne Keller, Margaret Alderman, and Lynn
Kinlan as deacons.

Like the Emmaus
disciples – our hearts are ignited with the divine energies of love, the sacred
within us and within all in our evolving cosmos, as we share the Christ Presence
at an open table of hospitality and mutual partnership.

Let’s begin our
reflection by asking who were the disciples on the road to Emmaus?

Luke 24:18 identifies
one of the disciples as Cleopas.

According to Dr. James Boice, a
scripture scholar and Presbyterian minister, the Emmaus disciples were a
married couple.

He cites John 19:25 where we
encounter Mary, the wife of Cleopas, who was present in Jerusalem at the time
of the Crucifixion: “Now there stood by the cross
ofJesushis mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary, the wife of
Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

Boice believes that the
writer of John makes the distinction between two different Marys in the second
part of the sentence, Mary, the wife of Cleopas and Mary Magdalene. And it is
logical to assume that she was the one returning to Emmaus with him on the
morning of the Resurrection. (Mark 15:40, 41: cf. Mark 16:1 and Luke 24:10).

Prolific
author Diarmuid O’Murchu also affirms the primacy of women witnesses in the
Resurrection appearances. The women were “The first followers, particularly the
women knew him to be alive, in fact in a way, that intensified and exceeded his
earthy mode of human aliveness. That extended aliveness of Jesus we describe as
Resurrection.… And in the empowering
wisdom of the Holy Spirit, first the female followers, and much later the male
ones, recommitted their lives to the work of the companionship.” (Diarmuid O’Murchu,
Christianity’s Dangerous Memory, p. 150)

Like
Cleopas and Mary who recognized the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread,
in our inclusive Catholic communities, we see the face of God in the women and
men we meet each day.

As I
share a simple meal of McDonald’s
chicken nuggets with homeless women and men in Sarasota, Florida, I touch the
Body of Christ, suffering and struggling to survive in my neighborhood. I know
that you, too, could share many stories of compassionate encounters with the Christ
Presence in the areas where you live and work.

Like
the women followers of Jesus, who were among the first to encounter the Risen Christ,
the international Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement is leading the church to
a deeper consciousness of our baptismal equality and mutual partnership in a
companionship of empowerment in the 21st century.

St.
Paul teaches that baptism makes us one. He writes that in Christ: “there is
neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.” (Galations 3 :28)

Reflecting on Galatians 3: 28 spiritual author Michael Crosby
observes:
Just as the church once struggled to surface the risen Jesus in Gentiles and
slaves, it continues to struggle with experiencing that same unique person in
women, especially in women who have a calling to preside at the Eucharist.”

Today
Lindy, Ann, Margaret and Lynn are responding to their call to facilitate the
breaking of the bread at the Banquet of Love around the Eucharistic table.

Lindy Sanford

Being ordained
Deacon and being ordained Woman-Priest is a great honor and receiving, a sacred
act. For we who are ordained here today it is also a public statement
that as Jesus treated women as equals, so should Christianity. So
should every religion, every culture, every country in our world today treat
women as equals.

Feeling called can
be a long and scary process. For women in a world that rarely sees us as
equals it can be even more so. Still here we 4 women are; here
blessed by your presence and support on this incredible day.

On the road to
Emmaus Jesus walked with two disciples many theologians think may have been a
couple. He reminded them of who he was by breaking bread...It was an
experience that healed the pain that washed through them when he was
killed. He healed healed them by
reminding them of what he had taught. Today the Risen Christ is always with us
on our journey, and much more. Like the Emmaus disciples, our hearts are
burning with joy and awe and much more.

Jesus taught with his stories and how he
lived that Heaven is here and now. That God, like a loving father provides all
we need and all we search for. That God, like a loving mother cries with
us when we hurt, smiles when we learn, and laughs with us when we are happy.

When pressed by his friends, Jesus told
them that the only thing he could and would insist of them is to love one
another. A simple commandment that takes a great deal of effort. Loving
everyone includes seeing each as equal, includes hospitality, inclusivity,
acceptance, tolerance, and forgiveness. It is easy to see people who are
like us as equals, and to welcome them. It is easy to respect those who
do what we would do, to include others who make the same choices we would make.

To love everyone we meet, everyone in
our community, in our country, on our continent, walking this earth, no matter
what we say and do, to include others is acceptance, inclusivity...and is
hard work!

Still, we are loved, accepted, respected,
cherished by a tender and caring Mother/Father Creator… Like the couple on the
road to Emmaus if we open our hearts and minds to Jesus’ message to love one
another, we will harness the power of love, and change the world.

We are daughters and sons of the
Holy One. We are all called!...To love one another! To
let Love for all creation be a fire burning within us.

Bridget Mary: Conclusion

Like Cleopas and Mary,
the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we awaken to grace in intimate encounters
with the Divine, illuminating our paths everywhere we go, and recognizing the
Holy One in everyone and everything.

Our brother, Pope Francis advocates a more
inclusive society. In a recent TED talk, he said: “The only future worth
building includes everyone.” I agree and if Francis connects the dots, this may
lead to a more inclusive church. I believe that the only church worth building is
a church that affirms everyone, including women priests.

Let us rejoice that “a church
for everyone” is already a reality here and now as we embrace the full equality
of women in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests and in the Upper
Room Inclusive Community as we ordain our sisters Lindy, Anne, Margaret and
Lynn in Albany, New York.

Throughout Christian history it
has always been recognised that the home is the place where Christianity is
passed on, and that women, mothers and grandmothers, have been the prime
evangelists. Now in the twenty-first century, homes may no longer function as
centres of evangelisation. The old headship of the male husband and father is
no longer a reality, and the male leaders of the churches are diminishing in
numbers.

And yet the women are still there, and this is
the problem. And what of the women down through the centuries? How were they
‘there’. As we have seen, they were there among the first and most faithful faithful
disciples, as house-church leaders, apostles, teachers, prophets, and presiders
at the agape meal, the initial form of Eucharist. They were there, to men’s
great surprise as martyrs and virgins, not having been deemed capable of either
role in male theology. They were there as abbesses and founders, writers and
preachers, mystics and scholars, reformers and missionaries, not only at home
on the continent of Europe, but in far distant lands, again demonstrating
virtues of courage and ingenuity that they were not supposed to have. And in
our own time women have been there as theological scholars and biblical
exegetes, parish leaders and pastoral guides, chaplains in a huge variety of
settings, and ministers of the gospel at bedsides and graves, birthing rooms
and schools, publishing houses and universities. And all of this has been done
entirely on their own initiative, without any official calling from the Church
because the Catholic Church does not consider itself capable of calling women.
And what have these women believed? How have they lived as Christians? What has
been the focus of their spiritual lives? Have they seen themselves as the
second to be created and the first to have sinned or as more prone to heresy?
These women, both today and down through the centuries, right from the
beginning, have built their lives around the following of Jesus, the living out
of the imago dei, the public exercise of compassion and the unique sense of
themselves as Godward and God-bearing people. They know that in the depths of
their humanity, like Jesus, they discover the signs of divinity. They have
learned, as Marguerite Porete, and Teresa of Avila have pointed out, that there
is no telling where God ends and we begin, where we end and God begins. They
know, as Julian of Norwich did, that there is ‘no wrath in God’, that God is
‘closer to us than our hands and feet’, and that God is as truly Mother as God
is Father.

They know that the Spirit of God
inhabits their lives as tides lurk in the sea, coming and going, rising and
falling, but always present. And above all they know that love is the meaning
of everything, It is quite extraordinary that Pope Benedict XVI, in his first
encyclical on Christian love, never mentions the love of a mother or a father
for their child, and never mentions the love that is the central focus of
mysticism. It is obvious that Christianity has travelled through the centuries
on two paths, one recognised, acclaimed and celebrated in word and liturgy, the
other hidden, often reviled, unrecognised and uncelebrated. If there is to be a
future church, these two paths will have to meet. It is not at all clear how
this is to be done, but a necessary first step must surely be to attend to the
voices of women throughout history and today. Four new women Doctors of the
Church have taken their place with very little pomp and circumstance –on the
Christian calendar. That might be a place to start at an official level.

But perhaps on an even more
important level, the experience of the ordinary day-in, day-out women of
Catholicism, can begin to be respected as among the primary bearers of the
Faith, and respected, heard and treated as the significant theologians that they
are. They can also be recognised and respected as the foundation stones of many
a parish community, for without the presence and ministry of women, these
communities would not exist. For women have always done theology, and ministry,
in both word and deed. Their theology has not necessarily been expressed in
tomes or lecture halls, but it is the daily living guide for more than half the
Church. This is not to exclude lay men, but at least they can move freely in
the male symbolic universe that is Catholicism. Women
have had to create their own religious universe, and it is the uniting of these
two universes, practically unknown to each other, that will save the Church of
God in our time."